Man gets five years after pleading guilty to rape charge

PORT ORCHARD — A 22-year-old Bremerton man who pleaded guilty to raping an intoxicated woman he drove home from a bar was sentenced Monday to five years in prison.

Dalton Cole Hulett pleaded guilty to a count of third-degree rape in Kitsap County Superior Court for the April 2017 assault.

While he was being investigated for that sexual assault, he was charged with second-degree rape for sexually assaulting another woman after a passerby reported a violent assault in the parking lot at Linder Field off Silverdale Way.

The woman told investigators that she knew Hulett and that he had punched and choked her. Before having sex, she told him “no,” according to court documents. However, that woman recanted, according to documents, and the second rape charge was dismissed.

The intoxicated woman told investigators she did not know Hulett. She used to a fake ID to drink at McCloud’s Grill House in East Bremerton and became intoxicated. She woke up in Hulett's bed with him having sex with her, according to court documents.

The woman told a Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office investigator that she forced him off of her, left the room and came back into the room and confronted Hulett. He introduced himself, shook her hand and explained that he had driven her car and brought her to his house, according to documents.

When interviewed by an investigator, Hulett denied having sex with the woman. Investigators wrote they found the woman’s bra during a search of his room.

The woman told a state Department of Corrections interviewer that she was satisfied with the five-year sentence and that she was in treatment.

Hulett told the interviewer he was innocent, that he had tried to explain his side to no avail and that he took the plea deal to avoid a potentially longer sentence if he was convicted at trial.

When he is released from prison, Hulett will be required to register as a sex offender.